Glamour and decadence thrived beside abject poverty, and the German capital’s outpouring of literature, fashion, and film marked it as the most vital European metropolis. As young women of this era, Dietrich and Riefenstahl lived so close to each other that Riefenstahl could see into Dietrich’s apartment from the roof of her building. Both women seized upon the revolutionary energy of the 1920s, seeking careers on the stage and in film.In 1929, filmmakers were casting what would become the iconic role of Lola-Lola (who made "Falling in Love Again" a sensation) in the groundbreaking sound film The Blue Angel. Riefenstahl—whose work in her "mountain films" had already made her a national emblem for the athletic rigor and spirited independence of the New Woman—hoped for the part but didn’t get it. Only a few years later she became the official filmmaker of the Third Reich. Dietrich, however, won the role and the adoration of millions when she moved to Hollywood and redefined the "vixen" for a new era.While Dietrich's slender and androgynous beauty made her a fashion icon whose influence can be seen to this day, Riefenstahl’s own iconography is no less indelible. With her work on two of the most notorious—if artistically sophisticated—propaganda films of all time—Triumph of the Will and Olympia—Riefenstahl was a progenitor of fascist symbolism. After the war she proclaimed her ignorance of Hitler’s motives, but she could never completely distance herself from her Nazi collaboration. Dietrich vehemently condemned Hitler during World War II and found a renewed sense of purpose touring with the USO, but as a result she could never comfortably return to her native Germany.Both women were "prodigies of will, discipline, endurance, self-reinvention, and exaltation of the body in all its muscular, androgynous, pose-striking pagan glory" (James Wolcott), and both had their grand passions, but neither abandoned ambition for the sake of love. As award-winning biographer Karin Wieland shows, in their later years, both women grappled with controlling their image—Riefenstahl by pursuing an additional career in photography, and Dietrich by eventually hiding at home as her famous beauty was ravaged by time.Skillfully juxtaposing these two fascinating lives, Wieland brings to vivid life a time of international upheaval, chronicling radical evolutions of politics, fame, and femininity on a grand stage. Examining the moral responsibility of the artist, Wieland poses questions as deeply relevant to our century as to the last. A magisterial portrait of two diverging but lasting images of the modern woman, Dietrich & Riefenstahl is "a superb" (Die Zeit) panorama of the twentieth century.

    Its cast includes actors, writers, musicians and composers, producers and directors, racketeers and labor leaders, journalists and politicians in the turbulent decade from World War II to Korea.

    To celebrate these films and their cultural heritage, Roger Moore has written a book that features all the Bond movies, along with a wonderfully witty account of his own involvement in them.  From the girls to the villains, the cars to the cocktails, the gadgets, locations and everything else, this beautiful book is illustrated with hundreds of iconic images from all the films plus many previously unseen photos from the Bond archive. This is the ultimate James Bond book, written by the ultimate insider, with all the affection and good humor he brought to the role.  It is the perfect gift for all fans of these much loved films.

    Brando Unzipped is the definitive gossip guide to the late, great actor's life New York Daily News. Lurid, raunchy, perceptive, and certainly worth reading, it's one of the best show-biz biographies of the year. London's Sunday Times. Brando Unzipped received an Honorable Mention from Foreword Magazine in its Book of the Year competition, and it won a Silver Ippy award for Best Biography from the Independent Publisher's Association."

    With never-heard-before anecdotes and new interviews with Reed's family, friends and peers, What Fresh Lunacy Is This? is a revealing examination of his mould-breaking personality.

    Beginning with his early days in Brooklyn and his college years in Texas, where he dreamed of becoming an actor, this book follows his career as one of the earliest members of the famed Actors Studio and as a Tony Award winner for his work on Broadway. Wallach has worked with such stars as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, and Henry Fonda, and his many movies include The Magnificent Seven, How the West Was Won, the iconic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and, most recently, Mystic River. For more than fifty years Eli Wallach has held a special place in film and theater, and in a tale rich with anecdotes, wit, and remarkable insight he recounts his magical life in a world unlike any other.

    Written by Moe Howard's daughter, this detailed biography is bursting with photographs Curly traces the life of one wacky Stooge from birth to his final status as a cult hero.

    I'm Maureen O'Hara and this is my life story.-- From Chapter One of 'Tis HerselfIn language that is blunt, straightforward, and totally lacking in artifice, Maureen O'Hara, one of the greatest and most enduring stars of Hollywood's "Golden Era," for the first time tells the story of how she succeeded in the world's most competitive business.Known for her remarkable beauty and her fiery screen persona, Maureen O'Hara came to Hollywood when she was still a teenager, taken there by her mentor, the great actor Charles Laughton. Almost immediately she clashed with the men who ran the movie business -- the moguls who treated actors like chattel, the directors who viewed every actress as a potential bedmate.Determined to hold her own and to remain true to herself, she fought for roles that she wanted and resisted the advances of some of Hollywood's most powerful and attractive men. It was in the great director John Ford that she first found someone willing to give her a chance to prove herself as an important actress. Beginning with the Academy Award-winning How Green Was My Valley, she went on to make five films with Ford and through him first met the great John Wayne, with whom she also made five films.In O'Hara, Ford had found his ideal Irish heroine, a role that achieved its greatest realization in The Quiet Man. And in O'Hara, John Wayne found his ideal leading lady, for she was perhaps the only actress who could hold her own when on screen with "The Duke." Ford, however, was not without his quirks, and his relationship with his favorite actress became more and more complex and ultimately deeply troubled. The on-screen relationship between Wayne and O'Hara, on the other hand, was transformed into a close friendship built on mutual respect, creating a bond that endured until his death.Writing with complete frankness, O'Hara talks for the first time about these remarkable men, about their great strengths and their very human failings. She writes as well about many of the other actors and actresses -- Lucille Ball, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, John Candy, Natalie Wood, to name a few -- with whom she worked, but ultimately it is about herself that she is most revealing. With great candor and a mixture of pride and regret, she reflects on just how this young girl from Ireland made it to America and onto movie screens all around the world. There were missteps, of course -- a troubled and deeply destructive marriage, a willingness to trust too readily in others -- but there were triumphs and great happiness as well, including her marriage to the aviation pioneer Brigadier General Charles F. Blair, who tragically died in a mysterious plane crash ten years after their marriage.Throughout, 'Tis Herself is informed by the warmth and charm and intelligence that defined Maureen O'Hara's performances in some sixty films, from The Hunchback of Notre Dame to Miracle on 34th Street to The Parent Trap to McLintock! to Only the Lonely. 'Tis Herself is Maureen O'Hara's story as only she can tell it, the tale of an Irish lass who believed in herself with the strength and determination to make her own dreams come true.

    For more than fifty years she has appeared in classic films (The Manchurian Candidate), in musicals (Gypsy, Sweeney Todd), and, of course, on television for twelve seasons in Murder, She Wrote. She has won five Tonys and has been nominated for three Oscars and twelve Emmys.Balancing Act is Lansbury's triumphant story, in which she has cooperated with noted theater writer and critic Martin Gottfried. Lansbury became established by her late teens in films like The Picture of Dorian Gray. While her career flourished, she was frustrated by continually playing supporting roles, until the musical Mame made her a major star. A string of stage successes followed, and she went on to conquer television in Murder, She Wrote.In Balancing Act Lansbury appears frequently in her own wry voice, sharing thoughts on everything from acting to gardening to her difficulties with raising her children. Here in all its color and drama is the inspiring story of a woman who has truly become a national institution.

    She tells of the friendships she made with many of her leading men and with women such as Joan Crawford whom she met as a youngster in a chorus line and Eleanor Roosevelt, whose President husband had a well-known crush on Myrna. Myrna Loy was not only an actress but also a woman who had political interests, championing the UN and Democratic presidential candidates from Truman onward, and was even for a time a "Washington wife". In her memoirs she presents a personal analysis of post-war politics up to and including Ronald Reagan.

    A substantial written component by Fischer details his upbringing on the outskirts of Zurich, Switzerland, and the hardships and triumphs he faced bringing the visions of his groundbreaking bands Hellhammer and eventually Celtic Frost to reality. In addition, the book includes an introduction by Nocturno Culto of Norwegian black metal act Darkthrone, and a foreword by noted metal author Joel McIver.Without question Only Death Is Real goes farther than any other source in exploring the origins of underground heavy metal. The wealth of visual information is astounding, both in terms of documenting early 1980s headbangers and exposing the still-relevant imagery of the first Hellhammer and Celtic Frost photo sessions. On top of that, the written chapters combine Tom Fischer’s often shocking stories with lengthy quotes from Martin Eric Ain and the other main Hellhammer members, explaining in intimately human terms how extreme metal was born.

    Hollywood has so many stories to tell and, unfortunately, so many of them do not have happy endings. From Marilyn Monroe to posthumous Oscar winner Heath Ledger, this book lays bare some of the myths and gets to the heart of some of Hollywood's Unhappiest Endings.

    After the tremendous impact of Public Enemy - in which he notoriously pushed half a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face - he was typecast as a gangster because of the terrifying violence that seemed to be pent up within him. Years of pitched battle with Warner Brothers finally liberated him from those roles, and he went on to star in such triumphs as the musicals Yankee Doodle Dandy (winning the 1942 Oscar for best actor) and Love Me or Leave Me. Even so, one of his greatest later roles involved a return to crime - as the psychopathic killer in the terrifying White Heat. He retired from films in 1961 after making Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three, only to return twenty years later for Ragtime. But however much Cagney personified violence and explosive energy on the screen, in life he was a quiet, introspective, and deeply private man, a poet, painter, and environmentalist, whose marriage to his early vaudeville partner was famously loyal and happy. His story is one of the few Hollywood biographies that reflect a fulfilled life as well as a spectacular career.

    Los Angeles Times

    His career in film started in John Boorman's atmospheric Excalibur and to date has included such highlights as Miller's Crossing (The Coen Brothers), Gothic (Ken Russell), In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan) which he also produced, The Usual Suspects (Brian Singer) and most recently Smila's Feeling for Snow and the Man in the Iron Mask. The range of roles is varied but always played with a brooding intensity.